That's a very good choice of speakers. Just make sure you get the most recent version of the Atoms (the ones with the waveguide tweeter and the white woofer) since they're a big improvement.

You can't power them with your DAC. You need an amp. Pick up a used amp off of eBay... there are a ton of good deals on good old stuff there now that everyone wants home theatre receivers. If you need to buy new, see if you can find a Pioneer A-35R.

That Pioneer has gotten a lot of mention as a great budget choice, but I've never been able to find distortion specs for it, even on Pioneer's website.

From ebay, a used Rotel, NAD, or Cambrigde integrated would work well for you.

It's almost impossible to find proper distortion measurements for most amplifiers. THD+N is a meaningless figure because it doesn't weight the harmonics for audibility (see the work of Geddes, among many others) and doesn't reflect low power performance. Stereophile does publish a proper set of measurements but they rarely review budget gear.

I can say that I owned the A-35R and the NAD C320BEE at the same time and the A-35R had superior sound. You can find full measurements for the NAD's bigger brother, the C370, online and the higher-order distortion performance is poor by my criteria, as are the measurements at low output levels. I have no doubt the C320BEE had similar issues, contributing to its audible inferiority.

The A-35R incidentally uses the same circuit board layout as a lot of amps from the late-90s, suggesting that a lot of manufacturers got their class AB amps from the same OEM. These days I actually use a Yamaha RX-770 as my main speaker amp, and though it is a higher power design, you can tell the OEM/designer was the same one who did the A-35R just by comparing the boards. This is not a bad technical design. The output transistors are even mounted on separate heatsinks, preventing thermal crosstalk, unlike most NAD integrateds.

Just because an amp is from an "audiophile" manufacturer (NAD, Rotel, Creek, Bryston, Cambridge, etc.) or has lower THD+N specs doesn't tell the whole story about sound quality. I still wouldn't hesitate to pick up a C370 off eBay for the right price, but buying new, especially on a budget, I would choose the Pioneer over whatever NAD and some others are selling on their low end. It's a nice, solid, good-sounding amp, provided you don't need gobs of power.

Boy was there are lot of junk in the 70s. I remember all of those big silver panels with large number of knobs. Putting nostalgia aside, low end equipment is much better sounding today than it was in the 70s. I'm amazed at how much better a t-amp sounds than the junk I used to listen to.

I've been very impressed with the Panasonic SA-XR55 receiver with two channel music through a digital source. It would be very interesting to compare it (an all digital receiver) with the recommended Pioneer A-35R. Or how about the Trends $100 version of the T-Amp? I'd love to hear the Trends through those Paradigm Atoms.

I've been running a pair of the v.5 atoms powered with a Trends TA10.1, fed by an Oppo 980 as a second system/HT. Couldn't be happier for the money involved. Stacks up very nicely against my main rig, but ultimately loses out on bass extension and detail.

Did you read the latest issue of stereophile? They said the v5s are lightyears better than the old atoms. I think people are posting opinions here without comparing side-by-side. Something that sounds bright in a crummy store setup is not necessarily bright.

Did you read the latest issue of stereophile? They said the v5s are lightyears better than the old atoms. I think people are posting opinions here without comparing side-by-side. Something that sounds bright in a crummy store setup is not necessarily bright.

I compared some v.2's to a pair of v.5's. Both broken in, powered by the Trends, as well as by a PrimaLuna Prologue 1, the v.5's had better bass extension as well as better detail. The v.5's bested the v.2's by a good bit, in my opinion.